Sweden and Mexico: youth unemployment 24% and 6%, but outside work and study 6% and 16%
Unemployment counts those working or looking for work, and in Sweden many job-seekers are students. In Mexico most of those outside work and study are not looking for work. People aged 15–24, 2024.
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"Youth unemployment" and "youth not in employment, education or training" have different denominators. The first is a share of those working or looking for work: a student seeking a side job counts. The second is the share of all young people who neither work nor study, whether or not they look for work. So a country with high unemployment can have few young people left out, and the other way round.
Bars: unemployment (% of the labour force aged 15–24) and the share outside work and study (% of all aged 15–24), for each country.
- Sweden: unemployment aged 15–24 (survey) % of labour force
2024: 24.3
- Sweden: not in employment, education or training, 15–24 % of youth
2024: 5.6
- Mexico: unemployment aged 15–24 (survey) % of labour force
2024: 5.7
- Mexico: not in employment, education or training, 15–24 % of youth
2024: 15.9
ILO labour force surveys of 2024 (aged 15–24, both sexes): unemployment and employment; the unemployed as a share of all young people = employment × unemployment / (100 − unemployment): 13.8% in Sweden and 2.6% in Mexico. The share outside work and study: World Bank, from the ILO. The unemployed who do not study are part of "outside work and study", so in Sweden at least 60% of the young unemployed study, and in Mexico at least 84% of those outside work and study are not looking for work.
Why young people in Mexico are not looking for work — family care, housework, discouragement — these data do not say. A student looking for a side job is unemployed by the ILO definition: this is not an error of Swedish statistics. The picture is the same in 2023.
A question for this picture
And those who left school without upper secondary? In Finland fewer and fewer of them find work.